El Gordo: The Spanish Christmas Lottery

This is a tradition that goes beyond a simple lottery, it’s the second longest continuously running lottery in theworld and as measured by the total prize payout is considered the biggest lottery worldwide. It’s always celebrated on 22nd of December.

The period of selling ticket for the draw is the largest during the year, because you can start buying it from July. It´s based on tickets with different amount of price, but the most purchased one is “el décimo” that costs 20€. There is a tradition that says you always have to PAY for the ticket, never accepted it as a gift, because it won´t be a winning one.

The most exciting part is the moment when El Gordo is drawn. Lottery outlets usually only sell tickets for one or two numbers, so the winners of the largest prizes often live in the same town or area or work for the same company. The prize of El Gordo is 4.000.000 €. The total amount paid out is 2,240,000,000€.

Your friendly neighbourhod travel guide,

Teddy

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Hi! With reference to your article on the Spanish Christmas Lottery/El Gordo held on 22nd December every year I have a couple of questions and I do hope that you could clear it for me. Are foreigners living abroad allowed to buy tickets online. A couple of websites have mentioned that residents of Spain are only allowed to play. Do let me know if this is true. Please do let me know the legitimate website that sells tickets online.

Hey there! With regard to el Gordo: how do you get to know if you won something? I’ll be leaving Spain the 22nd of December and am not sure if I should buy a ticket to the lottery or not because I won’t be able to collect a prize if I won something.. what do you think? Best regards, Verena

This is a very good question! On the official website you can make an account and actually buy your ticket online. It seems like they announce the numbers there. As far as actually collecting the prize, I’m not certain but take a look at the website below and maybe you’ll find something :).

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